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Summary of Week 2

Well done! You have now reached the end of the second week and are two thirds through this course.

You have spent this week refreshing all of your numeracy skills. Starting with basic numerical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) you moved on to fractions, decimals and percentages and how to switch from one to another.

Percentages crop up all the time in the business press and when statistics are reported. If you only revise one skill to prepare for employers’ numeracy tests, it should be percentages. In addition, you looked in detail at two common percentage calculations - percentage change and reverse percentages.

You then refreshed ratio and proportion calculations and saw that converting units and converting currencies were the same type of calculation. Reading currency tables is an important skill and we looked in detail at how to read the different types of tables.

If you have completed most of the quizzes you will also have had plenty of practice both of how to perform calculations and how questions may be asked in tests. You will have developed the essential skills of reading questions carefully and extracting the data you need. You will have practised interpreting your answers. You may have started to think about how you could save time through approximating and looking at possible responses.

It may be a good idea to return to the Numeracy skills confidence questionnaire that you completed in Step 1.12. You can print another copy from the link below. Compare where you are now to where you were then. This will enable you to see the progress you are making and to determine where you feel you still need to focus your attention. We hope that your confidence is growing too.

Please share your thoughts on the materials presented this week in the discussion step that follows.

In Week 3 we will be looking at how data is presented in tables and graphs and will spend some time focussing on statistics.